versify

American  

[vur-suh-fahy] / ˈvɜr səˌfaɪ /

verb (used with object)

versified, versifying

1. to relate, describe, or treat (something) in verse.

2. to convert (prose or other writing) into metrical form.

---

verb (used without object)

versified, versifying

1. to compose verses.

versify British  

/ ˈvɜːsɪˌfaɪ /

verb

1. (tr) to render (something) into metrical form or verse

2. (intr) to write in verse

---

Other Word Forms

• versifier
  noun
• unversified
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of versify

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English versifien, from Old French versifier, from Latin versificāre; see verse, -ify

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

versify versified versifying

In fact, I noted that Yarlexis may have benefited from a lack of facility with English in this case—some of those other queens were trying to versify overstuffed lines that made this English major cringe!

From Slate ● Nov. 13, 2012

If history's most absorbent author needed high legal drama, he had only to versify the royal squabbles in Holinshed's Chronicles.

From Time Magazine Archive

But in the evenings, France's Secretary for Foreign Affairs continued to versify.

From Time Magazine Archive

M. Paul de Musset does not relate that his brother began to versify in his infancy; but Alfred was indeed hardly more than an infant when he achieved his first success.

From The Galaxy, June 1877 Vol. XXIII.—June, 1877.—No. 6. by Various

But his use of it was so different that this poem would have seemed utterly lacking in melody to Augustan ears—Pope would have attempted to "versify" it.

From Robert Browning: How to Know Him by Phelps, William Lyon

Paraphrased and versified, some of Hardwick’s letters, along with her spoken words from that supposedly merry phone call of June 25, 1970, would find their way into the book, without her permission.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 9, 2019

The bounce of this versified self-portrait — there are six more stanzas — is quite irresistible, as T.S.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 11, 2018

Besides contributing to newspapers and magazines, he has versified for greeting cards, mottoes, calendars, bridge score pads, trade papers in which he has sung of machine tools, electric toasters, coal breakers, Mergenthalers, vacuum cleaners.

From Time Magazine Archive

Hefty, curly-haired Poet Coffin is 44, a professor of English at Wells College, Aurora, N. Y. He boasts of having versified simultaneously for popular Ladies' Home Journal and the highbrow Nation.

From Time Magazine Archive

The oracles were sometimes in verse, but more commonly in prose; in the latter case they were immediately versified by poets employed for that purpose.

From The Student's Mythology A Compendium of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Hindoo, Chinese, Thibetian, Scandinavian, Celtic, Aztec, and Peruvian Mythologies by White, Catherine Ann

Preparing the text has been a process of “distillation, musicalizing some phrasings and versifying some lines.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 2020

Still, Gioia admits that you can’t successfully capture live-action versifying in a book.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 2, 2019

What “The Bricks That Built the Houses” fails, at times, to give us is the measure of its author’s keen lingual instinct, the charisma and dynamism of Tempest on a stage, freestyling, reciting, versifying.

From The New Yorker ● May 10, 2016

Artfully arranged words, lofty and lowdown, are the weapons of choice in “ToasT,” Lemon Andersen’s ambitious and unwieldy new play about versifying behind bars, which opened on Tuesday night at the Public Theater.

From New York Times ● May 5, 2015

When he was not versifying, he was making jokes, telling anecdotes or trying to speak Little-Russian to Purring Cat, who, being from Little Russia, answered his questions with smiling passivity.

From The White Terror and The Red A novel of revolutionary Russia by Cahan, Abraham